British Ladies Cat Fight With American Women, 1832

Since I love old beauty tips and their cultural context, I was intrigued by A Slip of a Girl’s posts sharing clippings from the March 1831 issue of Atkinson’s Casket (aka The Casket).  In that same issue, found via Google Books, I found this great article on painting on glass — but I wanted more.
In [...]

Book Review Blog Carnival #36

Welcome to the 36th Book Review Blog Carnival — and welcome to my weirdly organized little library.
Why a “weirdly organized little library?” Well…
Doing these carnivals is always a lot of work — fun, but work. It’s not just the volume of submissions, but the sorting through them… You have to categorize them, and I [...]

Gifts For Mystery Lovers

Need a gift for the bibliophiles who dig mysteries? Or someone with a twisted sense of humor? How about gifts (mugs, t-shirts, posters, ties, etc.) featuring prints of an altered art piece titled That Nosey Miss Marple:

That Nosey Miss Marple by kindnessofstrangers
View other Altered art Posters
If you live near Miss Marple — or another nosy [...]

There Are Flowers In The Attic

When V.C. Andrews’ Flowers In The Attic was published in 1979, it became all the rage for a teenage girl to read it — and by ‘the rage’ you can presume not only the inclusion of the outrage of those who prefer to censor for all rather than interact with their children as well as [...]

The Very Best From Hallmark: Greeting Cards Through The Years

The Very Best from Hallmark: Greeting Cards Through the Years, by Ellen Stern, is not a collector’s guide, really; there are no prices or discussion of the secondary market at all. However, savvy collectors and historians who view the world through pop culture vision glasses can learn much from this out of print book published [...]

Of Long Fingernails & Gravediggers

In the Land of Long Fingernails: A Gravedigger in the Age of Aquarius isn’t a work of fiction, but with such a setting and characters like this, Charles Wilkins’ memoir reads as well as one.
In the summer of ‘69, Wilkins took a job at a cemetery. The gig alone would be worthy of many [...]

Book Reviews Blog Carnival #29

Welcome to the 29th installment of the Book Review Blog Carnival!
In order to keep this list a more digestible length (for those of us with short attention spans!), I’ve taken the liberty of moving a few of the entries to my monthly New Vintage Reviews Carnival (the latest edition of which will be was published [...]

Once Upon A Time… Gothic Romance Tales: Airs Above The Ground

Once upon a time, I read romances.
First of all, they were plentiful in my youth. Not only did the popular paperback novels go from house to house as the adults around me swapped and traded books, but one of my aunt’s neighbors worked for a mall bookstore and he often went (against rules of his [...]

Whatjamacallit Wednesday: Lessons From Thrift Store Bookshelves

I know it’s a crappy photo (it’s beginning to be a habit), but at least you’ll believe me when I say that Dr. Phil’s Ultimate Weight Solution and Richard Elliott Friedman Disappearance of God were shelved as “Romance” in the thrift store. Sure, customers could have done it; but that’s no less amusing to [...]

Weekly Geeks: Organization & Inspiration

This week’s Weekly Geek is “Tools Of The Trade”:
Book blogging, as a concept, is essentially pretty simple: If you have Internet access and an opinion about a book, you can be a book blogger. However, actually maintaining a book blog is much more complicated — our blogs are labors of love that require a lot [...]

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